Woman’s Viral Post Explains Why We Should Never Tell Young Boys to ‘Man Up’

“The way our culture treats boys sickens me,” Lyra Balearica wrote in her now-viral Facebook post. Balearica felt it necessary to share her experience after an 11-year-old boy who’d come in to have his blood drawn was chastised for his “nervous tears.”

“His guardian kept telling him to ‘man up’ and ‘stop acting like a sissy’. Then she threatened to record him crying to show it to all his friends, which made him cry more,” she explained. “I told her we had a strict no recording/photo policy and she got [mad] at me for ‘ruining the joke

“When this woman went to the bathroom I told the kid it was okay to express his emotions however he needed to and even grown men are scared of needles,” she wrote. “That everyone is scared of something and he was brave for doing it even though he was scared.”